Very few people have seen or heard an Ondioline. It sounds like the name of a bird, but it is in fact a rare type of synthesiser invented in the early 1940s, capable of mimicking the sound of other instruments through primitive vacuum tubes and sound filters. Its most long-standing exponent, Jean-Jacques Perrey, has one of the few models left that still work. "It's very old, extremely fragile and not a little temperamental," says Perrey. "A bit like me."

Although you may not have heard of Perrey, the chances are you will be familiar with some of his music. In the 1950s and 60s, Perrey developed a compositional technique using loops of pre-recorded sound that became a precursor of sampling. He has since become one of the most sampled artists in history: if you've listened to Dr Dre, Ice-T, Fatboy Slim or the Beastie Boys, then you've heard Perrey. His work has been recycled into countless commercials, jingles and soundtracks; his Baroque Hoedown has been the signature tune for Disney theme parks for almost 40 years.

Now, a year short of his 80th birthday, Perrey shows no signs of slowing down. He gives concerts, lectures and demonstrations around the world and, this Saturday, makes a rare British appearance, as part of the AV festival at the Sage Gateshead, where he will be talking about his career and performing selections from his latest CD, The Happy Electro-Pop Music Machine. Perrey's great achievement was to make the abstract, experimental techniques of electronic music accessible to the general listener. Cheerful and cartoon-like, with their mellow melodies and space-age sounds, the easy-listening grooves of albums such as The In Sound from Way Out! and Moog Indigo are closer to the world of Austin Powers than the avant garde. And Perrey remains one of the few people to wear a lab coat while playing the synthesiser.

His unique sci-fi lounge music propelled Perrey into the orbit of some of the most significant artists of the 20th century. Among his friends in Paris in the 1950s were Jacques Brel, Jean Cocteau and Edith Piaf. In 1960, he moved to America, where his admirers included Walt Disney and Salvador Dali, who was so impressed with Perrey's version of Flight of the Bumble Bee - spliced together from thousands of recordings of real bees - that he fell off his chair in amazement. "My life has been like a fairytale," Perrey says. "Edith Piaf was my fairy godmother, Walt Disney was the genie, and my Aladdin's cave was the Vanguard recording studios in New York."

It seems fitting that someone who describes his life as a fairytale should now live in a castle. Perrey has an apartment in Evian, on the French-Swiss border, in a 16th-century chateau with a spectacular view across Lake Geneva. It's here that he dreams up new projects and tinkers with his beloved Ondioline. It was a meeting with the instrument's inventor, Georges Jenny, in 1952 that launched Perrey's career. Entranced by synthesised sound, he quit medical school and became an Ondioline salesman-cum-demonstrator. His performances on the Parisian cabaret circuit led to numerous requests for studio work: he once found himself making swooping, space-age sounds alongside the legendary Gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, who invited him back to his caravan and served up a roast hedgehog.

Perrey's major break came in 1958 at Paris's Olympia Theatre, appearing alongside Piaf, who immediately took the young musician under her wing, paying for studio time that enabled Perrey to record his own compositions. "She was very demanding, a perfectionist," Perrey recalls. "Once the tape was finished she told me, 'Now you must send it to such-and-such a person in New York.' You didn't debate things with Edith. You did what you were told."

So Perrey soon found himself in a studio in Manhattan, equipped with all the latest equipment, including the most recent development in sound technology, the Moog synthesiser. Perrey put the Moog and Ondioline to use on a series of albums on the Vanguard label. Their influence would reverberate for years - The In Sound from Way Out! inspired a tribute from the Beastie Boys, who borrowed both the album's title and cover art for their own album 30 years later.

Sadly, none of this translated into personal fortune. Perrey did not own the publishing rights to his music when it was licensed to Disney, while Stanley Kubrick was able to incorporate some of Perrey's sound effects into 2001: A Space Odyssey for next to nothing. Perrey says: "Jean Cocteau told me, 'Thirty years after I die, you will retire a rich man.' Well, Cocteau died in 1963 and I haven't been able to retire yet."

Perrey returned to France from New York and conducted research into the therapeutic value of music for insomniacs. He also attempted to use electronic soundwaves to communicate with dolphins. "It was remarkable," he says. "If you played sounds of a certain frequency, the dolphins began to swim in perfect circles." It was not until the late 1980s, with the development of digital synthesis and sampling techniques, that people began to pay attention to Jean-Jacques Perrey again. A loping, funky track from the 1960s called EVA was sampled by Ice-T and remixed by Fatboy Slim. Suddenly Perrey found himself acclaimed as the father of hip-hop and techno.

Most recently, Perrey has worked with Seattle-based electronic composer Dana Countryman, with whom he collaborated on The Happy Electro-Pop Music Machine. Their second album, reveals Perrey, will be full of classic spy themes. "I felt that electronic music had veered off into a dark area and lost a bit of its innocence," he says. "I decided, many years ago, to bring as much optimism and humour to my fellow brothers and sisters on the planet as possible. But it becomes harder as the world moves so much faster. Sadly, the future is no longer what it was."